For I am but Mortal
by antepathy
Summary: IDW, post Ongoing 23  so spoilers ahoy . Orion finds himself at a loss speaking to Springarm.  ref twincest, canon character death.


PG  
>IDW post Ongoing 23<br>Springarm, Orion Pax  
>mentions of twincest, canon character death, angst, spoilers for Ongoing 23<br>A/N SERIOUS canontweaking solely so I can keep Springarm alive. Wheelarch and Springarm are identified as twins by Alex Milne. *headdesk* Don't know if this is going anywhere, but…. 

"Captain." The repair tech's voice was soft, but somehow filled with distaste, as though this whole duty—or perhaps it was Orion Pax of Iacon—tasted bad. "He can speak now."

Orion climbed to his feet, trying to ignore the pain from the new weight in his chassis. He realized he'd been curled around it, as if balling up, like a cyst, around it. It, the very thing Springarm believed in so strongly that he had a tamp of it on his cheek armor—the only defiance to police procedurals the mech had ever made in his young life.

And it had brought them both…here.

He ducked into the darkened room, the repair tech murmuring from the threshold to keep the lighting dim. And he could see why: the worst thing he could imagine for Springarm would be for the mech to be able to see himself. The head was more or less intact—still scored down to bare metal on the cheek armor where the three mechs had abraded off his tamp, but below the face, a mass of twisted wires snaked to various machines, the soft hums and beeps a backdrop of sound, thick, muffling. His body was scored, dented, split open, a laid-out testimony of the effort of the repair techs.

This was far beyond what the Rodion Police medical policies paid. Orion gave a brusque nod: The senator had been as good as his word.

"Sir."

Orion startled at the voice—different from Springarm's usual, quiet tenor. This was flat, devoid of emotion, and coming from a voc box near the mech, rather than from his own vocalizer.

"Springarm," he said. And then faltered. All the words he'd intended to say, all the questions he had to ask, seemed to fade into illegibility in front of this horror. This should never happen. Ever. To any mech.

But least of all to Springarm, whose only 'crime' was being devout and devoted.

"Wheelarch…."

Orion's systems rebelled, but he forced the truth out. "…is gone." He would not lie. Not to Springarm. Not after this.

"I know." The mouth twitched. "Twins. I felt it." A bitter smile.

"I'm sorry, Springarm."

"Not your fault." Even through the flattened gain of the voc box, the mech managed to sound exhausted.

Orion nodded, hating that he felt relief. One less thing to face, though Springarm not blaming him was a long way from him not blaming himself. He should have raised an alert, at least, after they'd paid him a visit. He should have suspected.

But Rodion was a small-crime area, and he simply had no experience with crime at that level: conspiracy, torture, murder, nepotism?

"He only joined because of me," Springarm said. The optic shutters fluttered, wearily. "S-so we wouldn't be separated." His face contorted with grief, the only part of him left to express anything.

"I know," Orion said. "I read his file." And re-read it, and Springarm's both, almost endlessly, in the days after. As though committing the thin irrelevant facts of an official file was somehow intimate.

"Did you get them." The vocalizer failed at the inflection, but Orion didn't need some modulation of sound to understand the flare of anger, outrage, the demand for justice, flaming under the words.

"They will never hurt anyone again." He heard a hardness creep into his own voice. He'd hated what he'd had to do—all of it, from his misuse of Springarm's body to using lethal force. But even though it was strictly by the protocols, he felt that he'd…overstepped, had no right. There was no trial, and only the eloquent proof of their mocking words, and the two mangled corpses of Orion's best officers.

A long moment. "…thank you."

"I…we…need permission to download the timestamped cortical memories. For the records."

The optics flickered, hesitating, thrall to some powerful emotion. The voc box's reproduction was thick with static. "Wheelarch is dead. They can't do anything to him now."

And in those words, Orion could hear the fearful struggle of duty and love: the twins had been more than 'close', closer than friends. Closer than the laws allowed. "You can refuse," Orion said. The Matrix seemed to bite into his spark, as though reflecting the agony of Springarm's struggle. "Or you can ask for amnesty. Extenuating circumstances."

"No," Springarm said. "they can kill me for it. Or worse, let me live. Without him." The voc box crackled for a long moment, before it cleared and the voice came back, tight, flat. "I give permission. For the download."

There was no comfort Orion could give, not even the mute contact of touch—Springarm's body was carefully out of the mech's sight, disconnected from any sensor relays. Orion nodded, feeling hollow, despite the mass of the Matrix bearing down on his chassis. "Thank you."

Orion felt how inadequate the words were. Springarm clearing him from any charges, at the cost of his own secrets. Orion could almost see the last moments, what they'd find on the feed, some weeping, tender moment, one crying out his love to the other, a hand clutching for comfort. It was…a blasphemy of love that it should be mauled so for what purported to be justice.

And he felt selfish, seeking, still, his own paperwork, his own record, when this…all this time. And he had nothing to offer in return for this magnitude of sacrifice: Wheelarch and Springarm giving not only their lives, but their secrets, their privacy, their love, for something larger than they were. Some abstract ideal they held higher than even their bond.

His comm beeped. He recognized the channel, and the encryption. The message was only a name. 'Dai Atlas.' One of the Knights, who was coming to take charge of Springarm. That had been the deal: save Springarm's life, at the cost of turning that life over to the Knights. It had seemed like a reasonable exchange at the time. Now…Orion was not so certain.

The Matrix throbbed against his chassis. No. He had this. "I…owe you an apology." For what I did, and for what I've promised you for. I had no right.

A minute twitch of the disconnected neck servos: Springarm trying to shake his head 'no'.

"I do. I didn't believe. And you did. And you were right." It hurt to admit he was wrong, but it was a clean hurt, a scalpel's cut, far more clean and painless than any of the ragged tears and sawing that had severed Springarm's head from his body.

"In the Matrix."

"In…all of it. The Knights of Cybertron. The Matrix. Everything." How could he not, now, with the Matrix itself burning against him?

A soft quirk of the mouth plates, that spoke the gentleness the voc box could not reflect. "I hope it brings you peace."

"And you as well," Orion murmured, reaching to brush one thumb over the bald-scored metal of the helm's left cheek, where, just days ago, he'd seen the tamp of the Matrix, a stylized glyph of the living reality that ate at his chassis as much as his conscience.


End file.
